Twenty years after the Canada Revenue Agency told him he owed $800,000 in taxes and penalties, Prince George resident Irvin Leroux has been vindicated.
In 1996, Leroux’s Valemount business was audited by the CRA. When he appealed their determination and asked for his tax documents back to prove the CRA was wrong, he was told they had been accidentally destroyed. The CRA seized and sold his business.
But Leroux didn’t give up. He says he couldn’t.
“If you sit back, they will win, you will lose and it will devastate you for life because how can you live with yourself? That will always haunt you.”
Eventually, the CRA backed down. But it wasn’t a complete victory for Leroux – when he sued the CRA for damages, the court decided against him but it did rule that the CRA has a ‘duty of care’ toward taxpayers. It was a landmark ruling for Canadian taxpayers.
In the wake of the decades long battle, Leroux says he just did what he felt was right.
“There are people like me out there who will stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough!’ I would not want to be standing by and watching my daughter go through what they did to me.”
Leroux has been awarded the Canadian Taxpayers Federation TaxFighter Award for his significant contribution to taxpayer protections. Leroux says the significance hasn’t sunk in yet.
“I really don’t feel I’ve really achieved much. I guess it hasn’t really hit me as to what the importance of that duty of care is when I still know that they can come and destroy your life without justification. And I find that appalling.”
At the award ceremony, in addition to his award, Leroux was presented with a letter sent the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. It contained a card from a Kelowna-area woman, thanking Leroux for his efforts, along with two $5 bills, to cover the $10 Leroux was asked to put towards the CRA’s court costs to settle the case.
All in all, the CRA spent more than $1 million in its attempt to force Leroux to pay the mistaken assessment.